April 3, 2017 Open Thread
Wilmington police seek suspects in city’s 51st and 52nd shootings of 2017 (link)
AAA: Summer gas switch costing you more at the pump (link)
Delaware man killed by trooper on NJ Turnpike identified (link)
Wild turkey rebounding in Delaware (link)
I sent the following email today.
Governor Carney,
As you continue to use your personal beliefs based on vague anecdote rather than concrete reasons and evidence to deflect pressure re: cannabis legalization in Delaware I ask that you reflect a few moments on this quote I read last night. The speaker was Nixon’s Chief Counsel for Domestic Affairs Mr John D Ehrlichman.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
The heavily taxed substances tobacco and alcohol are directly responsible for the deaths of scores of Delawareans ever year. Marijuana has directly killed not a single person in recorded medical history. Do you think it’s time to stand for something? Be a quote-leader-unquote… Please stop this political charade. Publically support HB 110.
I hope to see another one of your roadshows very soon.
Best regards,
RE Vanella
Wilmington
Stay on Coons this week though. I’ll handle Carney until we can free up time.
Driving around the wilds of Sussex county and seeing a burgeoning turkey population and a plethora of bald eagles is a happy sight. now if we could do something about the traffic……
In other important news today:
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/homepage-feature/item/102662-del-school-districts-preparing-to-get-qslammed-by-carneys-proposed-budget-cuts-?linktype=hp_impact
THIRTY SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS to be cut from the education budget. Let that sink in for a minute.
Carney’s proposal includes the option for districts to recoup that money through property tax increases that need only a vote of the Board of Education, but taking that route would piss off voters enough that future referenda would be difficult to win. And then there’s the school board elections to worry about.
Their other option is to cut staff. Aside from the immediate negative effects of laying off teachers, this would signal to high-quality educators (and to industries that we’d like to attract to the state) that education is low on the government’s list of priorities, and they should look elsewhere.
This is a mind-numbingly stupid proposal. That Carney could possibly think cutting education this deeply is anywhere near acceptable is absolutely infuriating.